Tag Archives: Iraq War

Four-star Gen. James Amos, commandant of the Marine Corps, used a speaking engagement at the Brookings Institute on Tuesday to deliver a stinging rebuke of the Obama administration’s handling of Iraq.

“I have a hard time believing that had we been there, and worked with the government, and worked with parliament, and worked with the minister of defense, the minister of interior, I don’t think we’d be in the same shape we’re in today,” Gen. Amos said, the Fiscal Times reported Wednesday.

It is rare for an active-duty serviceman to give such blunt public criticism of a sitting president. While Gen. Amos was careful not to mention the president by name, The Fiscal Times reported that the top general’s upcoming retirement this fall may have played a role in his decision.

“We may think we’re done with all of these nasty, thorny, tacky little things that are going on around the world – and I’d argue that if you’re in that nation, it’s not a tacky, little thing for you. We may think we’re done with them, but they’re not done with us,” the commandant of the Marine Corps added, the paper reported. “We’re probably the only country in the world that has the resources and the capability to be able to do some of this that others can’t.”

The decorated officer added that it is breaking the hearts of Marines to see many of the gains made before U.S. troops pulled out in 2011 squandered. Sunni radicals with the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) have taken over large swathes of Iraq since June.

Roughly 852 Marines were killed and 8,500 injured during deployments to Iraq, The Fiscal Times reported.

Communism, despite what the Left tells us, is evil, if you do not believe me, just look at the death toll under Communism in the last century. More than 100 million lives lost for the “greater good”. How many tens, or hundreds of millions more suffered torture, destitution, and loss of liberty under Marx’s Utopian Fanaticism? So, forgive me if I do not mark the passing of any Communist with sorrow. I see Communists for what they are, and that is people who would take every liberty I have and eradicate it. I will never grieve over the death of any Communist, no matter how the Left attempts to deify them. Robert Stacy McCain has some historical perspective on Mandela you need to read, here is but a snippet, and one photo that, to me, says enough about Mandela for me not to mourn him

“It’s a tragedy what is happening, what Bush is doing. All Bush wants is Iraqi oil. There is no doubt that the U.S. is behaving badly. Why are they not seeking to confiscate weapons of mass destruction from their ally Israel? This is just an excuse to get Iraq’s oil. . . .“If there is a country that has committed unspeakable atrocities in the world, it is the United States of America.”– Nelson Mandela, Jan. 30, 2003

Nelson Mandela was at all times a man of the Left — anti-Western, anti-American and anti-Israel — as attested by the fact that as late as 2003, he could say, “All Bush wants is Iraqi oil,” make a sneering reference to Israel, accuse the U.S. of “unspeakable atrocities,” and even play the race card over the Iraq War:

Bush is now undermining the United Nations. . . . Both Bush, as well as Tony Blair, are undermining an idea which was sponsored by their predecessors. They do not care. Is it because the secretary-general of the United Nations is now a black man? . . . They never did that when secretary-generals were white.

Mandela’s tenure as president of South Africa was, thank God, not the nightmare that Mugabe inflicted on neighboring Zimbabwe, but we ought not be fooled by liberal myth-makers who wish to reinvent Mandela as a secular saint whom all are obligated to revere.

Of course, The United States and Israel, they are the evil nations. And to the Left, to Marxists, nations that reject Totalitarianism are evil. Because to the Left Individualism, and honoring God-given rights is evil. To the Left, only the Collective is good and noble, no matter how many people their beloved Collectivism/Marxism slaughters and tortures. You can criticize me for daring to share historical facts, but ask yourself this. What type of man would pose in front of this symbol? The symbol of Gulags, torture, butchery, and mass suffering? is that man worth celebrating? I will let you decide that for yourself. For me, it is rather cut and dry.

Also, you need to read what Bob Belvedere, who loathes Communists as much as I do writes about this

The sickeningly sweet sycophancy has already started and will most assuredly continue at least until the old Marxist is buried — one hopes very soon. TV News will become even more unwatchable.

In the face of the avalanche of BS that will be said of Mandela, there will be a temptation among many on the Right to start to think well of him.

…The leading South African socialist parties merged with the Communist Party in 1920s, and in 1923 the South African Native National Congress changed its name to the African National Congress to reflect its growing internationalist, Communist outlook.

In its early phase, the group focused on non-violent resistance; Mandela, his future law partner Oliver Tambo, and several other young African students in and around Witwatersrand established the African National Congress Youth League (ANCYL). Mandela was one of the drafters of the group’s manifesto. The ANCYL criticized the more genteel ANC and promised to politicize and radicalize the movement. It succeeded.

And…

Sharpeville also marked a definite turning point for Mandela and other members of the ANC, who now opted for the use of force to accomplish their political agenda. An offshoot militant wing, the Umkhonto we Sizwe (UWS), the “Spear of the Nation,” was created by Mandela and others to bring the apartheid government down by use of sabotage. Mandela went underground and eventually left the country without permission, training in terrorist camps in Algeria and addressing the Pan-African Freedom Movement conference in Addis Ababa in January 1962. His speech was a masterpiece of one-sided distortions, as he condemned the South African government for atrocities like Sharpeville or Bulhoek (a 1921 incident in which government officers, attempting to enforce an eviction warrant on squatters, were attacked by a mob of religious fanatics and returned fire, killing 163; Mandela refers to them as ‘unarmed’, an adjective not supported by accounts at the time), invariably oversimplifying the complex background of each incident. He spoke approvingly of bombings in Fort Hare, Durban, and Johannesburg, and claimed that he was sending ANC members for guerrilla training.

Mandela returned to South Africa in 1962 and while in custody, was arrested and tried in the Rivonia trials. Rivonia was the headquarters of a group of saboteurs accused of blowing up not only government buildings but also the homes of government officials. Mandela did not deny that he was a member of the UWS and that it was engaged in sabotage, but claimed that the UWS did not engage in bombings of private homes. He also denied the possibility of finding real justice in a “White Man’s Court”.

Sometimes lost in the reports of the trial was a document that South African police found when they raided the UWS headquarters, the plans for Operation Maribuye, which detailed the targets that the UWS intended to hit and listed the strategic and tactical considerations that the group should consider. It is, in effect, a plan for war, and contrary to the rhetoric of the ANC and Mandela, both at the trial and in subsequent years, the UWS saboteurs had already claimed lives as well as buildings for their victims.

Mandela was convicted and sentenced to life in prison….

During his imprisonment, the ANC unleashed a reign of terror and torture that has been well-documented. In 1997, during the TRC hearings, the ANC leadership admitted to at least 550 actions carried out by its UWS wing, with another 100 incidents that “may or may not” have been carried out by members acting on their own. The terrorist attacks included the infamous “necklacings,” in which attackers put a gasoline-soaked tire around the victim’s neck and then set it afire (a tactic often ascribed to Mandela’s wife, Winnie, and her followers), bombings of government and military installations, and the establishment of secret “re-education” camps in northern Angola, Tanzania, and Uganda where the ANC would torture those reluctant to go along with its program of violence. In addition to warring with the apartheid government, the ANC often battled other black groups, particularly the Zulu-led Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP). The government, for its part, employed equally violent means of quelling black resistance. The death totals for the period from 1985-1994 reached 23,000, according to the TRC.

In any case, it’s no surprise that we’re seeing overwhelming acclaim for Mandela’s legacy from the left and the right, although it’s pretty pathetic that even so-called conservatives are attempting to tamp down the meme that Mandela was a Communist.

Bad idea: holding up a store clerk who happens to be proficient in firearms.

Worse idea: holding up a store clerk who is not only proficient in firearms, but who also happens to be an Iraq war veteran and a former prison guard and private investigator.

Jon Lewis Alexander, 54, is no ordinary store clerk. He has worked several “high risk” jobs and served four tours of duty in Iraq during his 30 years in the U.S. military.

Video surveillance from Saturday night captures the moment a would-be thief entered the Marionville, Mo., store where Alexander works. The thief hesitates for a moment and pulls a gun — but not fast enough to dissuade Alexander from pulling his own Walther PPX 9 mm handgun and sticking it in the hapless thief’s mouth.

It is hard out there for thugs. But remember this if the Left had their way the thug would have faced an unarmed clerk and this would have ended up differently

Remember Cindy Sheehan? Sheehan lost her son, Army Specialist Casey Sheehan, in the Iraq War in 2004, became a staunch anti-war activist, and an overnight celebrity. Where Sheehan went, cameras, microphones, and fawning praise followed, breathlessly capturing her every thought on President Bush and the war. The makeshift camp she set up outside of Bush’s Crawford ranch attracted scores of (other) celebrities, journalists, and even Congressmen. Sheehan’s message was not only devoutly covered but even flattering monikers were bestowed (“the Rosa Parks of the peace movement!”) and accolades were endless.

Sheehan was given any and every platform, with the media tripping over itself, for years, to report her words.

The espoused rationale for the intense coverage was, purportedly, that this grieving mother deserved an ‘explanation’ for her son’s death. This despite the fact that, as tragic as her loss was, Sheehan’s quest was not one seeking answers, nor were there any unaddressed questions or mysteries about her son’s death – her mission was a general, common one: that of an anti-war protestor.

That same media, however, who believed Sheehan was owed an explanation, is curiously dismissive of Pat Smith. Pat Smith lost her son, Information Officer Sean Smith, in the Benghazi attack last autumn. But apart from a few scattered interviews, the mainstream media has, for months, turned its back on Smith, seemingly echoing Hillary Clinton’s “What difference does it make?!” sentiment. Far from receiving praise and encouragement, Smith, in an interview with Sean Hannity on his radio program last week, emotionally noted the efforts to silence her.

But both are grieving mothers who lost a son while he served his country abroad during a controversial event. So why the difference in treatment? Why was one mother inundated with media while the other is shunned?

Quite simply, Cindy Sheehan — slamming the “illegal and immoral” war for “oil” and comparing Bush to Hitler — was Christmas morning, every morning, for the Left.

I have never fully agreed with Congressman Paul, although in some areas I respected and agreed with his positions. Even in those areas, including foreign policy, where I thought he was off base, I at least respected him. That respect, though, is now gone forever. And it is not coming back, not after Paul wrote this

Former Republican presidential hopeful Ron Paul said Monday that the shooting death of a U.S. Navy Iraq War veteran was the consequence of his life as a one of the military’s most celebrated snipers.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry hammered President Obama’s energy and immigration policies Wednesday and berated him for not holding a welcome-home parade to salute the U.S. soldiers who served during the war in Iraq over the past nine years.

“It really disturbs me that nearly after nine years of war in Iraq that this president wouldn’t welcome home our many heroes with a simple parade in their honor,” the 2012 Republican presidential candidate told nearly 100 members of the Westside Conservative Club.

“Maybe it’s because this war is unpopular with Democrats, I don’t know. But, Mr. President, our soldiers come first and it comes before party politics. We need to welcome our soldiers home – give them that parade, give them that pat on the back, tell them thank you for the freedom that we have in this country,” Perry told the suburban crowd during a stop on his central Iowa bus tour on Wednesday.

I wonder if gutless Mitt would say the same thing. Or maybe he would have to run it by a focus group first